


ritual for the end of summer

by volturialice



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Traditional Vampires, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, F/M, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, No Dialogue, Restraints, Supernatural Elements, Virgin Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29943489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volturialice/pseuds/volturialice
Summary: The ritual goes like this.A dark fairy tale.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Jalice Week - February 2021





	ritual for the end of summer

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for Jalice Week 2021, day 7: No Dialogue.

The ritual goes like this:

First, the bride must bathe. The water is as fresh and pure as she, straight from the cold mountain spring with no cozy hearth-stones or merrily bubbling kettles to warm it. No sooner has the chill settled in her limbs than she must allow herself to be chafed and prodded, buffed and polished into a smooth and pliable offering. She holds perfectly still as her doll-blank face is painted, the ancient mark of protection daubed on her pristine forehead. Someone cuts a single lock of her wild dark hair, to be taken away and consecrated. The rest is braided into an elaborate style (an ordeal, for no matter how compliant the rest of her, her hair always resists, and it takes all morning for half a dozen stranger-bridesmaids to coax it into plaits.) Then the whole careful construction is hidden beneath her veil, a coiled secret to be kept until tonight’s consummation.

The veil was her mother’s, and it’s much too long. It obscures the back of her trailing gown—so very fine, but too light for this weather; she shivers. Thus trembling and shrouded in white, she is taken outside to where a palanquin awaits, with four grim-faced men ready to bear her away to her destiny.

And everywhere, the red blossoms. They are garlanded around the bride’s neck, tucked into her hidden braids, pinned at the wrists and bodice of her gown. She treads on a soft carpet of them, staining the soles of her bare feet crimson. A flock of hollow-cheeked children are gathered with baskets, ready to toss more petals into the road before the procession. The dying flowers’ sickly-sweet scent hangs in the air, sticking in the bride’s throat as she is bundled into her palanquin.

Nothing else blooms this late. Little else blooms at all, in this forsaken place. The plants here are bitter, hardy things—mealy tubers and flaking lichens, straggling weeds that force their way up through the ancient rock, wispy wildflowers in tepid shades of white and yellow.

The red flowers are an obscene outlier. In late summer they spread their broad, luxurious petals over the mountainside like little exhibitionists, and for a month the thin air is thick with their decadent musk. They do not belong in this haggard place of scraping by and making do. The temptation they offer is too great.

For those who are bold enough to pluck them, _deface_ them, there lies a single drop of concentrated sweetness in the center. But the rest of the plant, every atom of it from petal to root, is poisonous. Year after year each new crop of children is warned away, and the flowers’ cruel ambrosia goes untasted. Even in this place the people value their scrabbling little lives.

Ensconced in her palanquin, the bride picks at the red flowers spilling from her neck. She would like to taste them, to lift her veil and learn for herself the ecstasy of poison, feel it burst on her tongue. But she must have patience. Not yet. She has a ritual to complete.

The wedding procession winds its way down the village’s single street, long and serpentine. It passes through the rawboned crowd like a sigh of relief, infecting the people with hope. The bitterest enemies press shoulder to shoulder, united in their desire to steal a glimpse of beauty. Careworn parents lift their children onto their shoulders. Today they can forget their troubles and look to the future.

In the meadow where the town meets the woods, there is a stone altar. Was it built by human hands? No one is certain. But it will serve for the ritual. It always has.

The villagers do not set foot in this meadow except to perform the ritual. Every child inherits the same traditional fear: sacred ground, dangerous ground. When the bride was a dauntless, laughing youngster, egged on by her playmates, she once dared to venture a few steps in—and was soundly beaten for her trouble when her mother found out. But not even the most brazen child ventures into the wood. It looms on three sides, a hopeless snarl of trees that not even the freezing dare to chop down. A winter wood, even in summer. A dark wood, even at noon. A creeping wood, whose claustrophobic depths swallow up sound, whose flickering shadows play tricks.

Arms lift the bride down from her palanquin. The crowd parts, clearing a way to the altar. A man cloaked in ceremonial furs begins to sing, his deep baritone echoing off the barren peaks that loom above the meadow. His carved staff strikes the ground in time with the music, a stately metronome as the other men’s voices weave their way in, strengthening the song’s lone thread into a sinewy rope. The words are in an ancient, forgotten language, but everyone knows their meaning. They speak of the change of the seasons, of the sprightly green maiden Summer softening into serene, gilded Autumn. It is the same giving-away song they have sung at thousands of weddings for thousands of years.

The bride feels the men’s voices rumble in her hollow chest as the village priest draws a final blessing in the air before her. He takes her hands with all the tender solemnity of his office, conscious of his sacred duty as the one to set her adrift like a boat leaving the shore of girlhood. He gently wraps a rope around each wrist and pulls them tight, checking the knots to be sure she will not slip free of her fate.

The bride’s skin tickles and burns where the hempen fibers chafe. She doesn’t struggle or thrash, plead or bargain like the previous girls from previous summers. She knows it would be as futile for her as it was for them. She is just like them, with her slender arms and pale neck, the fluttering dread in her belly and the pulse of her virgin blood loud in her ears. But she is different from them, too. She goes to the altar willingly. She has made her heart much colder than her feet.

The gnarled trees cast long, tortured shadows over the altar’s stone surface. The bride takes her place at its foot, wrists trailing the ropes that will tie her down, and looks up for a last glimpse of the setting sun.

Through the lace of her veil, she thinks she spies movement in the trees. There—a faint glimmer between the branches, like the eyes of an animal reflecting back firelight.

No one else sees the glimmer. They are watching her, their lovely one, their hope for salvation. This is the end of summer, the ritual that will bring them peace. This is a wedding, a joyous occasion. This is one of their own, given away in marriage to keep them safe. They only have eyes for her—their daughter, their bride, their sacrifice.

* * *

The creature whose eyes glimmered in the torchlight is watching her, too. His is the most crucial role in the ritual. There is little point in sacrificing a virgin without someone to sacrifice her _to._ For every maiden, there must be a monster.

This monster looks somewhat like a man, tall and golden and well-formed—a fit groom for any bride. He is a very conscientious bridegroom, and has come early to the ritual because he has never been to this village before. Its people are quite unaware that their territory has recently changed supernatural hands. Quite unaware of _most_ things, truth be told.

Do these sunken-eyed villagers even know what will come to collect their offering? Doubtful. If he slipped from the treeline to mingle with the crowd, would they notice the monster in their midst? Perhaps they would note his beauty, his strangeness. But none would recognize him for what he is. The people of this lonely place have never heard the word _vampire_. They know no taxonomy of monsters—only the primitive, dread-laced awe of prey for predator. They offer their tribute to a vile, loathsome beast, a demon of unfathomable hideousness. Who else would come by night to drain the life from the innocent? Who else would demand such a precious sacrifice?

He pities and envies their ignorance. Part of him wants to enlighten them. _There’s no need for all of this ceremony,_ he might announce. _We don’t require your strongest youths and loveliest virgins. Anyone’s blood will do._ Most of the other towns scattered about the mountains don’t bother with so much pageantry, preferring to dump their offerings—criminals and malformed babes, the elderly and crippled—in the forest and flee back to the seeming safety of their homes. If they hurry through last rites first, it is to lighten their own consciences.

But perhaps the ritual serves its own purpose to this village—perhaps it is the one thing these people can control. They must snatch at what comfort they can, here in this land where fear has taken root so deep that they sacrifice their children to invisible monsters.

He feels the ripple of unease in the crowd before he spots the woman. She’s a petite, bedraggled figure, with her frizzy strands of salt-and-pepper hair falling loose from her cap, but she shoves her way through with a furious strength borne of desperation. With a terrible cry, she breaks from the crowd and lunges, snatching at the bride’s sleeve. Before anyone can react, she yanks the bride away from the altar and throws her arms out as if to protect the little red-wreathed figure.

The sight stirs something strange in him, or perhaps it’s the sharp, sweet note of the woman’s agony, the _mother’s_ agony, that resonates. It has a unique flavor, like the churning rise of an advancing flood. When the groomsmen close in around her, she fights them off with chapped red hands, chest heaving under her threadbare shawl. Sweat gathers in the laugh lines on her face, her skin blotchy pink from exertion. She stands no chance—not one frail, middle-aged woman against four burly men—but when they finally wrench her daughter from her arms and drag the woman away, wailing, she makes them pay for every inch in scratches and bruises and vicious kicks. A she-beast protecting her young.

The bride might be a little wax doll, for all she responds. Tugged about by mothers and killers without even a peep of distress—she might be a bloodless corpse already, beneath that veil. Perhaps he will lift it to find a horrible dead thing, a monster in his own image.

She lays down on the altar with all the sweet obedience of a child tucked into bed, and holds perfectly still as they bind her hands to opposite corners. Then she spreads her legs like a butchered animal so they can fix the ropes around her ankles.

The groom is growing rather bored with all the chanting and singing, the tossing of petals and reading of scripture. The villagers must be out of the field by dark—that’s the arrangement. They have until the sun sets to scurry back to their homes and shut them up tight. Then they must allow the newlywed couple some privacy, to consummate their marriage.

The bride brings no dowry but her blood. The monster’s throat burns in agonized anticipation. Soon he will have it, the only maidenhead he desires to take, coursing hot and divine over his tongue.

As the sky fades from pink to lilac, the villagers trickle out of the meadow, quickening their steps as soon as they’ve turned their backs on the altar, tugging their children along by the hand. The groom thinks of the wailing woman, the weight of her desperate grief pulling at him, and resolves to kill her daughter swiftly. He’ll call upon his gift to ease the girl’s passing, numb the pain and fear. The effect never holds long, not in the scarlet throes of death-and-feeding, which is why it’s been such a long time since he tried to comfort his victims this way. But he’ll try again. He can give the girl’s mother that much.

He waits until the sky is completely black, until even the new moon’s aborted light is choked behind clouds, and the meadow utterly deserted but for the girl tied to the altar. She cannot see him emerge from the trees—she would not see her own hand in front of her face, were it free to reach there and not bound to the stone.

The dark is his accomplice, letting him see without being seen. He looks his new bride up and down where she is spread-eagled beneath him, open and inviting.

He’d thought the other villagers were great, hulking specimens, but now he realizes that isn’t the case—the girl is just _small,_ her delicate body and dainty limbs constructed according to a different scale. Her size feels like an extra condemnation, a baleful commentary on his own vileness. Do they have to sacrifice them so _young?_

Luckily, it is the quality, not quantity, of her blood that will slake his thirst. He rests a knee on the stone between her legs and leans over her, inhaling. He can already taste the sweet rawness of her skin where it scrapes ever-so-slightly against her bonds. She’s delicious.

Her eyes are closed beneath the shroud of her veil, her breaths slow and even. The wet thump of her heart is steady, relaxed. Asleep, then. So much the better. She’ll never have time to feel afraid.

The groom lifts her veil, his touch lighter than thistledown. Even in the unguarded innocence of sleep, her little features are solemn. There is no sign of fear but for the gooseflesh that rises on her chest, her body reacting to the danger her sleeping mind cannot sense.

He brushes the garland of red flowers aside with impossible gentleness, baring her neck to his teeth. His body lowers over hers until he can feel the warm flush of her skin. Venom floods his mouth as his lips hover above her throat, close enough to feel every twitch of her pulse. Close enough to feel the vibrations as she speaks:

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

**Author's Note:**

> G can have a little dialogue, as a treat
> 
> well, that was fun. thanks for reading! I might fuck around and continue this someday; I have a couple ideas I'm toying with for where it could go (though none I like yet.)
> 
> In the meantime, if YOU have an idea for where it could go, my works and I are signed up for the Jalice Network Remix-Redux event starting March 13th. which means mi Sacrifice AU es su Sacrifice AU, babey. it's all up for grabs!
> 
> as usual, I'm @volturialice on tumblr and ff.net if you wanna come hang.
> 
> and if you liked this story, you can [reblog the photoset](https://volturialice.tumblr.com/post/645206677704032256/ritual-for-the-end-of-summer-twilight-alice) on tumblr!


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